“If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight…

“If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things”

I was so lucky to view the amazing beauty of Vincent Van Gogh yesterday:

He really loved what he did, and it was this passion that drove him to produce some of the most amazing pieces of art ever created. Perhaps Vincent looked at the world as a child does, and he saw things that only they can see. I believe that true innovators have this skill, too … the “why is the sky blue?” type of question.

There were so many things that stuck in my head about his life, especially in that no one wanted to buy his art when he was alive. To me, we see this in our lives so many times, and where our ideas can be continually dismissed by people who fail to take risks, or who have little vision or drive. For example, Google took a risk in acquiring YouTube for $1.5 billion in 2008, but they now make the same amount of money in revenue from it — every three weeks! Someone, somewhere, had a drive, a passion and a vision to move this forward, and advance their business.

Vincent’s reflections on life really are an inspiration. And for all the people we know that he helped us in your lives … the inspiring teachers … the supportive leaders … the people who have a drive and passion that goes well beyond what would be expected … it is this comment that perhaps encapsulates them best …

And, after years of learning cryptography and building up a core understanding of its principles, it is this quote that really rings true for me:

While few could ever achieve the great art of Van Gogh, we can aspire to learn something so deeply, that it reveals new insights. To me, art and maths exist together, and each is beautiful in its own way. While others would see the depth in art. I see it in the Feistel network used in the RSA method:

To me, the beauty of the X-OR bitwise operation is as beautiful as anything we would find in art. I live in a finite field world of cryptography, and it has opened up my mind to the way we can build a more secure, resilient and robust digital world. Without mastering the area of cryptography, I could never imagine thinking through a vision of the future.

We increasingly live in a world of superficial learning, and we do not learn things deeply anymore. As a teacher, a disappointing response from a student is “I googled for it, and I couldn’t find the answer”.

So, go on, and master one thing, and it will open up new insights into this beautiful world of art and maths.